Bringing Down the Krays

by Bobby Teale

  Cannon sensed what was coming. He was shaking.

  I decided something had to be done to stop Reggie killing him. I could not stand by and be a witness to the murder of this man. What had he really done? Not a thing, as far as I could tell. He may have said something about the Krays they didn’t like, but that’s not it, you see. When the Krays wanted to do something they would put out all sorts of stories to justify some trumped-up reason for a killing.

  So I just turned to Albert and came out with this line that someone was outside and we should stop Reggie from doing this.

  Albert looked over to the door and could see no one. He said to me, ‘Well, I’m not going to stop him because he will put me in the same chair.’

  So I said, ‘Well, I am going to stop him.’

  As I walked over to Reggie it was almost too late. His eyes had already started to glaze as I leaned over to whisper in his ear that someone was outside. That was as good a line as I could think of. I remembered he was a bit deaf in one ear. I was whispering in his left ear with his right one out of my range, hoping I had the good ear.

  Reggie had just started to put his hand into his pocket to pull out the gun but when he heard me whispering he stopped. He stepped away to face me to listen to what I was saying.

  ‘Can I have a word with you?’ I said.

  ‘What for?’ said Reggie.

  I asked him to go to the kitchen and I told him what I’d already whispered in his ear, that I thought there was someone outside in the street. I didn’t know who, just someone hanging around and not moving on. Could be the police, could be some friend of Cannon’s.

  Reggie was livid and started swearing. Just then Cannon twisted out of the chair and I saw his face pale as he saw the sheet someone had placed behind him to soak up his blood. Suddenly, he jumped up, burst through the rear door and ran out into the street. Reggie was cursing everyone for allowing Cannon to escape. But he was more concerned about how Ronnie was going to react. ‘What the fuck will Ronnie say now?’

  Jack the Hat said, ‘He was so quick, we couldn’t stop him.’ That was a bit feeble.

  I said I had heard a car revving up outside as Cannon escaped. That was a lie. Anyway it sounded good.

  After that, Reggie and I and one of the others went to the Regency Club in Amhurst Road and got drunk. It was just another day on the Firm.

  Not too much later, I was in a club in Soho with Alfie and his friend. There was Bobby Cannon, standing at the other end of the bar. All of a sudden the place was empty and the doors were locked, and Alfie, Micky and I were trapped inside with Bobby Cannon and some of his people, about six or eight of them.

  Cannon came over and said in his hoarse, low voice: ‘Go back to the twins and tell them to fucking do a better job next time.’ Alfie said something like, ‘No, Bobby. You go back and tell them.’

  I wasn’t so brave. I just said I didn’t know what he was talking about – better job than what? What time with Reggie? I said I was not there. I’d been out of London. He told me to tell the Krays that he didn’t give ‘a monkey’s about them’, and he let us go. He didn’t have a clue that in fact I had saved his life.

  By now it’s midsummer. The streets are hot, the city air is stuffy. It never seems to get dark. On 30 July it’s the World Cup final at Wembley and everyone’s going mad for it. But I’ve got other things on my mind. Life with Reggie in Manor House has long ago stopped being quite the non-stop party it used to be.

  Ronnie’s got the hump and is getting crazier by the day. When he’s not telling Reggie it’s his turn to kill someone – anyone – he’s specifically telling Reggie to get rid of me.

  So Ronnie and Reggie move together into a flat in the Lea Bridge Road. Somewhere anonymous, somewhere to lie low – the word’s round that the Old Bill are still going for Ronnie over Cornell. It was a small place, just a couple of rooms on one floor above a barber’s shop.

  I’d been over there a few times. I’d even hidden my passport there (without telling Reggie) as a kind of place of last resort should I have to get out of the country in a hurry. That time might be coming. It would be the last place anyone would think of to find it. Now I get another summons.

  I took a cab over from Mum’s place. We pulled around the back alley and I told the cab driver to keep the cab running and if I didn’t come out in ten minutes to get on the phone to Scotland Yard and tell Mr Tommy Butler to get here straight away.

  It’s funny but the cab driver seemed to know what was going on, because he said, ‘I will.’ I hadn’t even paid him, but he seemed to totally understand. I then went up the stairs and knocked on the door. Reggie opened it and I went inside and said, ‘How’s things?’ He mumbled something and I walked up the passageway and went to a picture hanging on the wall. I pulled it a little and my own passport slipped out from behind it. Reggie was surprised and he said: ‘When did you put that there?’

  ‘Oh, the other day – for safe-keeping,’ I replied.

  I then said to Reggie, ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve got a cab waiting for me outside.’

  He said, ‘Don’t go yet. Ronnie wants to see you.’

  So he takes me to a little room, and I mean a room the size of a small bathroom, and inside are about six of the Firm, including Ronnie. Big Albert Donoghue closed the door behind me and stood in front so I could not move. Now Ronnie is about ten inches in front, looking straight at me.

  ‘How is everything?’ he said.

  ‘Great,’ I replied.

  We’re ridiculously squashed in this room, and the atmosphere is tense and charged. Someone squeezed their way out, then someone else knocked on the door and looked in and said, ‘Phillips has been in touch again.’ That’s when everyone started to look at me. I know that the cab saved my life that day because I just said, as casually as I could manage, ‘I have to go. I’ve got a cab waiting for me downstairs.’

  I went to go past Big Albert and he didn’t move, but just kept looking at Ronnie. Then Ronnie, after the longest time, nodded at him and Albert moved aside and let me out. Feeling almost lightheaded with fear, I managed to stumble up the passage, out the door, down the stairs and into the taxi and the cab driver, whoever he was, said: ‘I was just ready to call the Yard.’

  I knew I was living on borrowed time. I was terrified for myself, and was even more frightened for my family. Someone at Scotland Yard was feeding everything I said straight back to the Krays.

  I asked Pogue the next time I saw him how the hell this could be happening. Pogue said that ‘they’ were trying to stop it from happening – by which he must have meant the high-ups at the Yard – but he must have known who was leaking the information. Once more he told me to be very careful.

  I said, ‘I will live a lot longer if you stop the leak. At least get some misinformation out. Tell a few lies. Pin it on someone else.’

  I had already told the Yard about a very low-life character by the name of ‘Jack’ Frost – or ‘Frosty’ as he was known – who had told me once about a little girl he had raped and murdered. She was twelve. He’d buried the body in Epping Forest. Actually he had boasted about it.

  As he was telling me he was getting so excited, like he was reliving the whole thing. I felt sick, but I had to look like I was interested. I told the Yard all of this and also about a man that Frosty said he had killed with an axe five years earlier. Now at last I could see the Yard at work. Soon after they let a leak out from them saying that it was Frosty who was ‘Phillips’ the spy.

  And now the pressure’s really on me. It’s not yet public knowledge that the famous Tommy Butler is on the Blind Beggar case but the Yard really needs a result.

  Where are they living? I told Pogue that. Number 471 Lea Bridge Road – a flat above a barber’s shop. When’s the best time to nick them? I told them that too. There was a meet planned in two nights’ time.

  ‘We’re going to need to get John Alexander Barrie [alias Scotch Ian] as well,’ Pogue told me. I could only agree with that. It wa
s vital for my survival to have all of the twins’ inner circle taken off the streets. All of them. And, although Alfie and David didn’t know it, it was the same for my brothers.

  I got word to Butler where the twins were. I told the Yard when would be the best time to hit the gaff. I described the internal layout, the exit routes. There was a little alley at the back. I told Pogue in no uncertain times that they had better get it right. Nick the twins. Nick Scotch Ian. And keep them nicked.

  Or else I really was a dead man.

  You know what happened. It was in the papers. In fact it was the first time that anyone in the real world knew that the famous Tommy Butler was on the case. The coppers hit the place at 1.50 a.m. on 4 August 1966. They went in with ladders and sledgehammers in the middle of the night and rounded up everyone present. Ronnie and Scotch Ian were taken to Commercial Street Police Station, Reggie to Leyton nick with the others.

  The identity parade later that morning was a farce. Ronnie refused to remove his horn-rimmed spectacles. It was all a big joke to him. They had briefs scuttling everywhere. The Blind Beggar barmaid failed to show altogether and the two witnesses who did turn up would not say anything except ‘maybe’ and ‘I’m not sure’.

  Reggie, Ronnie and Scotch Ian got out the next day, 5 August. The press were tipped off and got down there pretty quick. I think it was at Vallance Road. It was ‘Read all about it, the Krays get away with it’, just like always. I’ve seen the cuttings. I’ve seen the photographs – they’re always being used – with that big floral wallpaper in Violet Kray’s front room. They must have been laughing their heads off.

  ‘The first we knew about [Cornell’s] death was when we read about it in the newspapers,’ Ronnie told the reporters. ‘Mr Butler came to see me – the police gave me sausage and mash for tea. I don’t know what they wanted to charge me with. It may have been murder, they didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Our mum’s getting distinctly worried about all this,’ Reggie said. ‘And today’s her birthday. So we’re going to have a little drink and cheer her up.’ How very nice. But no one was in a party mood. I certainly wasn’t when I heard about their release that morning. But I had to keep smiling.

  The next day their boasting about getting away with it appears in the papers. Tommy Butler fucks it up. It’s all a big laugh.

  But nobody’s laughing when we’re in private. Who’s the bleeding grass? How did the Old Bill know when and where to turn them over? If I run they’ll know it’s me. So I have to go back in, to be loyal, dozy Bobby.

  I was sitting down at a meet that day with the Firm and with Ronnie. Connie Whitehead looked into the room and said: ‘Phillips has been in touch again!’ He’d got that from some copper for sure. Frosty was in the room with us. He did not bat an eyelid – though of course, he didn’t know he was in the frame.

  I was talking to Frosty at the time and staying in step with the conversation – but not letting Ronnie know I had heard what Connie had said. In fact I was absolutely terrified. Please God, don’t let me show how frightened I am. Let them think that Frosty is the informer.

  Ronnie started glaring at each one of us in the room as I glanced over to him. I kept talking as if I had nothing to fear. Reggie caught my eye and leant over to me and said quietly that he wanted me to go with him on a meet the next day. I asked him what for? ‘You will see when we get there,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a nice drink tonight. We’ll go to Madge’s.’

  If there was a time to run it was now. But they’d know – and wherever I managed to hide, Alfie and David would get it. They wouldn’t have a clue what was coming. ‘Sure, Reggie,’ I said. ‘Let’s go to Madge’s.’

  CHAPTER 14

  A WALK IN THE WOODS

  IT WAS ALL about getting things done as far as Reggie was concerned. That was how he was. The way he made it seem that day, he was just asking me very nicely if I could come and give him a hand doing some small bit of business that had to be got out of the way. We’d have to do it quickly and do it quietly. Just the two of us – Reggie Kray and Bobby Teale, the best of friends just as we’d always been.

  We’d had a few drinks the night before round at Madge’s just as we’d agreed. Reggie had been very direct: have an early night and be round at Vallance Road at nine the next morning as we would have some running around to do, he had told me. I think that he and Ronnie had fixed it after I left the meet with Frosty. In fact I’m sure of it. I think that Ronnie told Reggie it was his turn to get something going. It was time to get rid of me. Perhaps I was Phillips, perhaps not – they couldn’t be sure. But either way I was getting too close to Reg and Ron wanted me out of the way. He’d leave Reggie to decide how to do it. Somewhere quiet – somewhere out of town.

  It was Sunday 7 August. I got to Vallance Road a few minutes late and I started to open the front door to walk right in as we always did, but it was locked. So, I knocked. Reggie came to the door with only his trousers on and said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought it was open.’

  I closed the door behind me and asked Reggie, ‘Should I lock it?’ Reggie said, ‘No, Connie Whitehead is on his way.’ I followed Reggie down the narrow passage to the kitchen and his mum, Violet, asked me: ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘thank you.’ I sat in the kitchen and Reggie added, ‘I won’t be long,’ and he went to finish getting dressed.

  There seemed to be no one else in, or at least no one awake and up in the house. Violet Kray was fussing around, putting shirts on hangers. She did a lot of that. ‘Reg,’ she said, ‘let me make you a nice breakfast,’ and turning to me she started chatting away, saying, ‘Bobby, you need some breakfast,’ and ‘How’s Nell, your lovely mum, doing?’

  ‘OK,’ I said, as I looked over to Reggie, who had just walked back into the room, to see if I could get a read as to whether we really would be staying for breakfast.

  ‘No Mum,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a meet to go on. We don’t have time,’ and out the door we went, with me going first. All the while we were looking all over the place as usual just in case anyone was going to make a hit on us.

  It may sound crazy but I was never afraid of Reggie – or Ronnie – or any of the rest of the Firm. And if you think about it, you will see that if I did show any fear they would have picked up on it. Perhaps that is what it really was all about that summer morning. I think I knew that at the time.

  So I just had to act like not a thing was going on. It was just the two of us. No muscle from the Firm. It was like we could sort things out with a little chat. There was a lot to sort out. Reggie strode out and walked very fast to the Jag parked outside.

  I tried to get a read on whether he was carrying a gun. He didn’t always carry one. When he did he would have it in his outside jacket pocket or stuffed in his waistband. I couldn’t tell. Although normally I carried a gun myself (at least since I’d swapped running a holiday boat hire for being a villain), I wasn’t tooled up today. I got in the car. It was a brand-new Mk II Jaguar – dark grey, with wire wheels, leather upholstery and a walnut dashboard.

  ‘So where are we going, Reggie?’ I asked casually. Reggie started the car and took off at great speed with me in the front passenger seat with the car door still not closed. He was always a bit like that. ‘You’ll see when we get there,’ he replied. I asked him why. ‘You will see when we get there,’ he said again.

  Why should I be frightened of Reggie Kray? Since we had first met a year earlier, Reggie had become my closest friend. He had even paid the solicitor’s fee in my divorce. Ronnie was the crazy one. Ronnie was the only one to be a killer – as far as anyone knew – but it was no secret that he was leaning on his brother to do the same. I had once heard Ronnie say: ‘You must do someone because when you do there is a rush like you would never believe.’ It seemed to be just for the fun of it.

  Ronnie hated anyone who got close to Reggie. But in his mad way it was important to Ronnie that Reggie did the killing. That he should kill me. I suppose it was to pro
ve that he, Ronnie, had been right about me all along – and that now Reggie thought the same.

  If Ronnie had known for certain I was the spy for Scotland Yard he would have set the whole Firm to bring me in and then taken his pleasure in my slow death by torture to find out what information I had passed and to who. I am sure he suspected, but he could not be sure, especially with the misinformation about Jack Frost starting to surface and clouding the issue. Perhaps it was easier to just get me out of the way. And it was Reggie’s turn.

  I needed to work out if Reggie was on a downer or upper pill. I was getting good at reading him, but I would never let him know. So I would just jabber on to see how he responded. I would talk about the night before or something to make him think my mind was somewhere else.

  We drove through north-east London. The day was cloudy, a bit chilly for August. I looked out the window and thought it might be the last time I would see ordinary people just going about their business. Going to church, waiting for the pubs to open, going out on a Sunday. I envied their lives. I noticed the people glancing at Reggie and me as we glided past, dressed to the nines in this flash car. They must have thought we were millionaires on our way to some business meeting. Instead it looked like I was going to my death.

  I knew where we were heading. We were out of Hackney, out of the East End – into the neat suburbs. It was Epping Forest where we were going, right on the edge of the big city. It was where I had run away with my brothers as a boy. You could hide anything there.

  All the while as we were driving my mind was whirring away frantically, trying to work out what to do. At one stage I thought I would jump from the car if Reggie slowed down. But he always drove like a lunatic. I mean a raving lunatic. So jumping was out of the question – and anyway he would just run me over. It’s funny, but as we drove, I could see how the thing would play out as if it wasn’t happening to me but to somebody else. It was like watching a film. It was as if I could see Reggie driving the car over me and backing up over me just to make sure I was dead.